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Salvadoran Justice Wears Out Patience

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SALVADORAN soldiers may have hoped to rid themselves of meddlesome priests when they gunned down six Jesuits last November, along with their cook and her young daughter. But the slain churchmen are proving to be more potent adversaries in death than they were in life.

The Salvadoran Government's ability to punish the priests' murderers and the senior officer or officers suspected of ordering the killings could well determine the future of American policy on El Salvador. The case again raises the central issue of how the Government can reform the Salvadoran army.

The Salvadoran Government says that at least five army enlisted men and three lieutenants shot the priests six months ago in apparent reaction to the biggest guerrilla attack of the civil war. The soldiers say they were ordered to kill the Jesuits by Col. Guillermo Alfredo Benavides Morales. All are under arrest, but have not been tried.

There is a whiff of secondary American responsibility for the killings as well. The squad that killed the priests had just undergone two days of advanced training by American advisers and formed part of the American-trained Atlacatl Battalion - a unit that consistently has carried out the worst massacres of civilians in the war.

Such brutal revelations about El Salvador are now forcing Washington to choose again between the grisly Realpolitik of sustaining an army that has murdered with near impunity for 60 years, or forcing that army to punish at least one of its senior officers.

That is something the army has never been willing to do. In a decade of numerous human rights violations by a military intent on eliminating what it perceives to be political adversaries, no army officer has been convicted or punished, despite strong evidence of involvement in killing of civilians.

Kidnappings and Drugs

Officers have also have twice been caught running kidnapping rings. A few are currently suspected by American and Salvadoran officials of having run drugs, and others are suspected of carrying out numerous massacres.

Congressional critics assert that a Salvador dominated by an army that is not under Government control and that continues to mistreat civilians is unworthy of continued American aid. They warn that if the Salvadoran Government fails this time to carry out justice, United States support will wither after a decade of bitter debate over a small country most Americans cannot identify.

''You have to force this issue,'' Senator Christopher J. Dodd said. ''There is no constituency left in this country to support aid to El Salvador if we don't act this time.''

Mr. Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut, supports a recent House committee resolution calling for cutting American aid in half if the killers of the priests are not brought to justice. Administration officials say they fear such a move could promote chaos rather than reform. They say they fear too much pressure on the army could lead to a coup and a greater bloodbath.

''The Salvadoran army opened political space over the last two years and the guerrillas replied by using it to launch their most damaging attack ever,'' said a senior Administration official, describing the Salvadoran Government's willingness in the last few years to permit exiled leftists to return to the country and to allow greater political debate. ''If you tell them now that they have to open space again, and also accept a big cut in aid,'' he said, the army will again reject that ''and wage all-out war.''

Administration officials and Senate Republicans are lobbying for a lesser cutoff of aid that would not take effect until next year. They say they want a bipartisan stance, but concede it may be hard to forge.

The moment is made doubly delicate because on Wednesday the Salvadoran Government and guerrillas will sit down for the first time under the auspices of the United Nations to try to negotiate an end to the war. The signals that the United States sends to each side could have a big impact on the outcome.

''If the United States executive and Congress can enter into a bipartisan policy and send a clear message in support of a negotiated settlement, I think we have a good chance to end the war in El Salvador,'' the Assistant Secretary of State for Latin America, Bernard Aronson, said in an interview.

But in Congress tempers have risen on reading the report of 19 House Democrats who two weeks ago issued a study of the Jesuits' murders.

The Congressmen found that, like other political murders involving Salvadoran army officers, judicial progress on the Jesuits' case is at a standstill, with crucial evidence missing and no attempt made to investigate whether other senior officers may have been involved in the killings.

The report also throws a harsh light on the conduct of the American Embassy in El Salvador. Embassy officials leaked to the army high command the name of the only officer in the army who was willing to come forward to charge that a senior officer had ordered the murders. The embassy then undercut the testimony of the only known witness to the murders - whose account has proved to be highly accurate.

Denial, Then Resistance

The army high command denied for a month that the army had killed the priests, and even after acknowledging it strongly resisted having Colonel Benavides charged with the murders. It appears unlikely, given the close-knit nature of the Salvadoran officer corps, that Colonel Benavides would have acted alone - or, if he did, that his fellow officers would not soon have known of his actions. Yet Colonel Benavides may go free from a combination of a lack of evidence and intimidation.

The House report disturbingly notes that in months of talks with Salvadoran officers about killing the priests, ''no senior military official with whom we talked said it was wrong.''

The report then states as a central conclusion: ''We are convinced that the military's contribution to the problem of human rights and a paralyzed judicial system are not caused by a few renegade officers; they reside at the heart of the armed forces as an institution.''

If after 10 years of effort American policy cannot find a way to convince the army to reform itself, army gunmen may prove to have killed more than six priests, an innocent woman and her daughter last November. They may also have killed United States willingness to continue to remain deeply involved in El Salvador.

A version of this article appears in print on May 13, 1990, on Page 4004001 of the National edition with the headline: Salvadoran Justice Wears Out Patience. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe